


A Lifetime Away

by indigoat



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, POV Daniel Sousa, agent carter season two, canon divergence - agent carter, peggysous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 18:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17709158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigoat/pseuds/indigoat
Summary: Written around the episodes of Agent Carter Season Two, exploring Daniel and Peggy's relationship.





	1. Part One: Reunited

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going through old writing and I found this little piece that I did when S2 was airing, where I would write a follow-up after each episode from Daniel's POV. I tried rereading it to see if it needed editing, but I can't actually remember what went on in S2 since it was like 3 years ago so... so here it is in its original state. hope u enjoy and thanks for reading x

He hadn’t told anyone that he’d moved across the country for the woman he loved. That it had been too much—sitting in the SSR headquarters every day, watching her walk by his desk and nodding good morning. When a spot opened up for chief of the Los Angeles police station, he’d jumped for it, just so he could get her out of his head. 

It had been awkward saying good-bye to her—did she clap him on the shoulder like the other men at the office had done, did he shake her hand? Would she expect something less professional? Or was that what he was hoping for?

In the end, he’d given her a brisk handshake, and offered the number of his new, private office telephone in L.A. Giving her his new home number would have been too much. The first time she called him, it was just to see how he was settling in, her voice light and teasing when she asked if he could handle all the L.A. crime. The second time she called she used his home number, since he gave it to her during their first conversation, saying it would be easier to reach him there. He wanted her to be able to reach him. He imagined her arms stretching from New York City to Los Angeles and wrapping around him as he tried to sleep in his new, cold bed. 

It was right after he finished dinner, and they talked until Peggy yawned and said she had to go. He had forgotten about the time difference, and suddenly the distance between them hit him hard. It felt like a lifetime kept them apart.

The third time she called, he didn’t pick up. He was getting used to not seeing her; walking into his office without his heart dropping to his stomach and his nerves twisting inside his gut. It was easier to let her go when she wasn’t there to remind him of how much he did not want to do precisely that. 

So he tried to forget her and ignored all of her calls and met a nurse named Violet who was his new physical therapist in Los Angeles. She wasn’t Peggy, but maybe that was a good thing. Violet carried lipstick that wouldn’t knock him out if she kissed him with it, and she’d never held a gun before in her life. She was nice, normal, but Daniel had never wanted normal, no matter how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise.

Seeing her in his office in L.A. was like being punched in the gut, like forgetting how to breathe. The way she walked into the room, like she owned it, like nothing could ever scare her. The way she carried herself so confidently, ignoring the stares from the other men. The red lipstick and red nail polish, a bit chipped but somehow it suited her more. She was so comfortable, so at ease, and it made him feel like a little boy all over again, nervous and awestruck and so infatuated it was hard to focus on anything else. Regret flooded him—why had he ever left? 

He wished Jack had sent anyone but her, dammit.

She told him she’d called. For a moment, it was like her collected exterior was breaking, flaking away, letting him see something vulnerable underneath. He said he knew, but he looked away as he said so. He couldn’t make himself meet her eyes. 

He was sitting in the passenger seat of Vi’s car, and the radio was on. She seemed to understand that he needed silence and her understanding just made him feel more ashamed. What was his problem, dragging her into this mess? Was he just going through the motions—new job, new house, new life—was she just another part of that? He had everything he was supposed to want—wasn’t he happy?

Happy? Yes. Content? Of course. But he’d gone to war, he worked for the SSR. When had he ever wanted to be content?

❦

He slammed the door to his office so hard the shutters on the little window rattled, and threw his crutch across the room. Peggy couldn’t be dead… he couldn’t believe that…

If she died tonight, she would have never known how much he cared for her. She would have died thinking he left and never picked up the phone because he didn’t want to, not because he wanted to so badly it hurt. Died thinking he bought a ring because he wanted to, not because he felt he should. All the things he should have said were building up in his chest; wrapping around his throat and making it hard to breathe. He wanted to smash something, to rip something apart to keep his heart company.

A small, hopeful part of his brain spoke up, louder than the swirling numbness and regret. “Peggy can’t be dead,” it said. “She’s Peggy.” Daniel leaned against his desk and took a deep breath. He picked up his crutch and threw open his door, shouted out orders to his men. You mess with Peggy Carter, you mess with Daniel Sousa, too.

❦

She wasn’t dead. Relief flooded through him and numbed his fingers as he saw her walking towards him. She was alone; the scientist she’d been with was nowhere to be seen. He felt a sinking feeling in his gut; he knew what that meant.

He couldn’t get to her fast enough. He wanted to hug her, offer comfort, but he couldn’t make his arms move. Instead he told her to go home, get some rest. Hollow words, he knew, but they were all he could think of. Her eyes and nose were red as she turned away, and all he wanted to do was scoop her back up and hold her until everything was over and life was okay again, and death was something that never happened to someone you knew. He wanted to personally destroy everything that ever hurt her, but he knew, deep down, that he would have to end up destroying himself too. 

He watched her slip into the passenger seat of Stark’s car, watched the car slide off into the darkness, away from him. He couldn’t stop seeing her face behind his eyes.

“Oh, Peggy,” he said quietly to himself, watching the car until he couldn’t see it anymore. He turned back around to focus on the officers around him. “Don’t you know how many times I’ve cried for you?”


	2. Part Two: Phone Call

Daniel wanted to pace, but that was too much work with a crutch. Instead he rolled out of bed and shuffled to the hall, then sat down on the floor and pulled the phone of its cradle. He dialed the number Peggy gave him a few days earlier and after a few rings an unfamiliar woman’s voice said, “Jarvis residence.”

“Hello,” he said uncertainly. “This is Daniel Sousa, is Margaret Carter there?”

He could hear the woman breathe into the phone for a moment, then she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Sousa, but I think Miss Carter needs some time off tonight.”

“I didn’t mean to work—“ Danny started to say, but he heard a click on the other end of the line and realised he’d been hung up on. He dropped the phone in his lap and cradled his head in his hands. A few moments later, the phone rang, breaking the silence and causing him to start violently. He held the receiver to his ear. 

“Hello?”

“Daniel?”

“Peggy. I’m sorry for—“

She cut him off. “It’s alright. Anna told me you called, and I… wanted to talk to you.”

“You did?”

“Daniel, why did you leave New York?”

He hadn’t been expecting a question like that, not tonight. Somehow the darkness that enveloped him seemed to make the question safe, more dreamlike, surreal. Like they wouldn’t remember it in the morning. Right now it was just him, and Peggy’s voice in the other end of the line.

“You know why,” his voice coming out smaller than normal.

He heard her sigh. “Yes. Are you glad you came here?”

She wasn’t talking about the location. “I don’t know. It feels right, but not what I wanted. Want. What I want.”

“It’s nice to meet someone who isn’t involved in all of this… this mess, isn’t it?” she asked, and he could tell that she was trying to smile and tearing up at the same time. He managed to laugh.

“Sometimes it feels like my whole life is the mess. No way out.”

“And people just get dragged into it with you,” said Peggy softly. “So you want to protect them.”

“Or you want to know that they can protect themselves,” Danny added, thinking about her in Russia, saving Jack, or in the diner, taking down seven men. Over the phone he heard the chime of a clock. He looked to his across the hall. Two o’clock. 

“I should go,” Peggy said. 

“Yeah, alright,” Danny said. “Good night.”

“Good night. Oh—and Daniel?”

“Yes?”

“I’m glad you called.”

She hung up. Danny pushed the receiver back onto the cradle and reached for his crutch, and headed back to his room to try and get some sleep.


	3. Part Three: Tuesday

The next morning there was no time to be embarrassed, as they arrived at Doctor Wilkes’ house to find it flooded with press and had to fight their way inside, and then got to work right away. Daniel had forced himself to forget how much he’d loved working with her, but now it was all coming back to him. He should have moved further away. 

They were like clockwork, their brains seeming to function on the same waves, and they only had to look at each other to know what the other was thinking. They moved around crime scenes like they were dancers in an elaborately choreographed performance; it was the only time Daniel didn’t feel subconsciously aware of his leg and his limp and his crutch. It was easy to forget a ring, a nice scientist that could dance on a dancefloor, the fact that someday soon, Peggy would be flying back to New York and leaving him like he’d left her.

❦

He was sitting at his desk, feeling as if he hadn’t slept properly since Peggy had first arrived. It was late enough that his thoughts were beginning to get blurred around the edges, like his brain was filling with fog.

They’d spent the afternoon in Stark’s laboratory, after realising that the zero matter was affecting Peggy somehow. He felt the same way he’d felt after he’d heard about the Isodine explosion, if she froze over he thought his heart would follow right after her.

And then Doctor Wilkes was in Stark’s laboratory, and the way Peggy was looking at him made Daniel want to disappear. Which wasn’t really fair, he knew. He was glad Doctor Wilkes was okay, or at least, that he wasn’t dead (Stark said he could put him right, and Daniel believed him). He wanted Wilkes to be alright—he did. He just didn’t want him to like Peggy, not like that. Even though it was Daniel that had run from her in the first place. She could be with anyone she chose, he just wanted with all of his heart for that person to be him.

He’d been gruff, formal, with Wilkes, which was now making him feel ashamed. What right did he have to be jealous? He was engaged, for God’s sake. 

And then there was that. Daniel had been going through a filing cabinet when Thompson showed up, asking about Peggy. Asking if it was a promotion or a broken heart that sent Daniel packing six months ago. So he told him about Violet. She was turning into his excuse, he realised. Of course he wasn’t sweet on Peggy, because he was engaged to Violet (or at least, he’d tried to be). Of course.

Then Thompson had asked if he wanted to go out for drinks, but Daniel turned him down. He didn’t want to drink lukewarm alcohol with Jack Thompson and talk about a woman whose engagement plans he’d ditched to make sure Peggy was okay. Instead, he shut himself into his office with two mugs of spiked coffee and three hours’ worth of file reading, and tried as hard as he could not to think about what Peggy was doing with Wilkes at Stark’s house.


	4. Part Four: Worry

They were standing on the stairs, having slipped away from the chaos of the office after Masters interrupted their plans to raid the club. Peggy was on the step below him, and it took more willpower than Daniel knew he had to stop himself from leaning down and kissing her right there. Instead he shook his head and looked down at her and said, “I’m in this with you ‘til the end, Peggy.” He’d never meant anything so fully, never felt the weight of a promise fall so physically onto his shoulders. The sincerity of his words made him feel even more vulnerable than a kiss ever could.

❦

Not that she would have wanted to kiss him anyway. She was standing in front of the chalkboard with Doctor Wilkes, and he could see the way they were looking at each other—as if they were the only two people in the world. He lowered his eyes, knowing the hurt was reflected in his face and hoping the butler was too preoccupied with other matters to look at him and see it written so plainly there. 

He wanted to rewind time, to go back to the SSR office in New York when everything was simple, or to that phone call she gave him that he never answered. He wanted to scream at himself to answer it, to pack his bag again and return to the place he’d left, where he asked Peg out for a drink and she only said no because she was busy that day. Maybe if he’d spoken up more often she would have noticed he was there.

❦

Staying in Stark’s house had been a good idea at first, since it meant that if anything happened Danny was already within earshot. But it also meant he spent an awful lot of time staring up at the ceiling in the dark, wondering what Peggy was doing. She was somewhere under the same roof as him, perhaps brushing out her hair or practicing her swings on a defenseless punching bag. It drove him crazy that she was so close to him, and yet, a few doors and a hallway might as well have been a continent and an ocean. Impassable.

Instead he thought about what Masters had said to him—about a tidal wave coming and his friends drowning, and what Peggy had said that night on the phone. He knew Peg had gotten the same Spiel as he did, and before he knew what he was doing he was picking up his crutch and opening his door and walking down the hall. When he got to Peggy’s door he knocked, not even sure of what he was going to say to her. Don’t be scared to let someone in? Stop pushing him away, and let him help her? Reassure her that he knew how to swim?

The door opened. When she saw who the caller was Peggy’s brow creased with concern. “Daniel. Is something wrong?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “I just…” He just what? “I mean, what I said about being on your side, I meant it.”

“You want to protect them.”

He took a breath, then went on. “And I know you want to protect everyone, I get that, but doing this, it’s my choice, just like it was yours. If you want to push me away, I get that too, because I’ve done the same thing myself with people I want to keep safe. But I’m not going anywhere if I can help it, and I want you to be able to, you know, trust me to take care of myself. Don’t hold yourself back because you’re scared of what could happen to me, or any of us. We all know what we’ve gotten ourselves into. We all know what we’re capable of. I know you can keep yourself safe, and I can do the same for myself, if you’d let me.”

“You want to know that they can protect themselves.”

His spontaneous monologue came to an end, and he was suddenly aware that he was standing outside Peggy’s room in his pyjamas with five minutes on the clock until midnight, and he probably interrupted her hair brushing or punching bag massacre. He stared at some point over her shoulder to avoid accidentally meeting her eyes and added, “I just, ah, wanted to tell you that.”

Peggy was quiet for a moment, and Danny wondered if he should leave, but the silence they shared was somehow not strained like he thought it would be. 

“Daniel?”

“Hm?”

“Do you worry about me?”

“Of course I—I mean, well, of course.”

“Then you know I can’t help worrying about you.”

He figured she was protective of her friends, but hearing her say that still filled him with warmth. He ignored his fluttering stomach and pressed on. “But I know you’ve got your own back, even if I am worried.”

“And I know you’ve got yours.”

“You do?”

“Of course.”

“So you won’t… you’ll tell me what you’re planning, so I can help?”

“Even if it’s a felony, chief?” 

The corners of his lips tugged up. “If that’s what you think is best. I trust your instinct.”

“Then I’ll try.”

“Alright.” He picked up his crutch and turned away from the doorway, away from Peggy. “Goodnight, then.”

“’Night, Daniel.”

Her door shut with a gentle thud, and the hallway grew dark again. It seemed as if the distance between them was somehow less, and even though a door had just been closed, Daniel couldn’t help but feel as if he’d just left one wide open.


	5. Part Five: Mistakes

He just wanted her to go.

He was sick of it—and yes, okay, she was why he’d left. Of course it was her.

No one wanted to be in the background of the life of the person they loved. Not him. So he accepted a promotion and moved all the way across the damn country, and what did she do? Followed right behind him. He wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all. Wanted to take a swing at her punching bag, and keep at it until his knuckles were bloody and raw. He wanted physical pain to remind him that there were worse things than loving someone who didn’t love you back in the same way, that he was the lucky one. He was alive; he had a house, a job. He should be counting his blessings, not pacing until his feet were sore.

His thoughts were a broken record, repeating the same anger, hurt, longing, and guilt over and over again. It was as if once he had left New York he was moving forward with his life, and when she came to him in L.A., she put him on pause again. An endless loop of thinking of her. 

There was no way. Rogers, Wilkes. The way she looked at Wilkes made Daniel feel physically ill, like someone was twisting his stomach into knots. It made him want to cry, it hurt so badly, and he chided himself later on, always. How could he let someone make him feel that way?

But it wasn’t just someone. It was Peggy.

He groaned and stood up and walked out of his room. He couldn’t stay in Stark’s house tonight. The ring in his coat pocket was burning a hole in his breast. He was going to Violet’s.

❦

Nothing was going the way Daniel had planned. He lost the ring in Violet’s couch, which felt like some sort of depressing omen. He kept approaching Peggy at ungodly ours of the night like some sort of creepy, lovesick fool, and she kept pretending that it was completely normal to do so. He messed up his proposal because he was flustered about losing the ring and he was still wondering what compelled him to spill all of his feelings to Peggy at midnight, and he was stressed because he was trying to propose, dammit, and he couldn’t stop thinking about the woman he wasn’t proposing to. 

Guilt was wrapping around his chest like ivy, tightening each time he took a breath. He hadn’t met to get Vi tangled up in some sort of soap opera mess, because he really did care about her. She was blunt and compassionate and she could always make him smile, even when he was worried about a case or frustrated during therapy. 

He knew he could have been happy with her in another time. In a time without Peggy Carter. 

❦

He saw her drop, heard the crash that froze his heart over and drowned out his screaming of her name. Bile was rising up his throat as he ran over, his fingers trembling, his brain short circuiting. Not again. Not tonight.

“Peggy!”

She groaned, looking dazed, turning her head down slightly. He followed her gaze and felt his stomach lurch. A twisted piece of bloodstained metal was sticking out of Peggy’s gut. 

“Peggy, oh my God—“ Daniel knelt down, dropping his crutch. His hands fluttered over her like nervous butterflies, what the hell was he supposed to do?

“Peggy. Peg. Stay with me, okay?”

“Daniel…”

“Don’t worry. I’m here.” He reached into his pocket for his walkie-talkie. “Rose? Jarvis?”

The device crackled to life, Rose’s voice. “Chief?”

“I need you guys,” Daniel said, struggling to keep his voice from cracking. “Now.”

❦

One hand was holding hers, and the other was pressing a cloth to her side to stop the flow of blood. His hand was slippery with her blood and it was making him sick with fear. He was watching her bleed out right in front of him. 

“Take a left here,” he said, and Jarvis turned the car down a narrow street. In the passenger seat, Samberly looked like he was going to throw up or faint. This was probably not how he thought his first mission would go. 

Peggy’s head was resting on Daniel’s chest. Her eyes were shut and she’d bitten her lip so hard blood had dribbled down her chin. Daniel wiped it off with his sleeve and cradled her chin in his hand, her skin warm and alive. What if she—no, she couldn’t. She would be okay. “Stay with me, Peg. We’re almost there.” She shifted slightly, her eyelids fluttering. He hoped she couldn’t feel how fast his heart was beating.

❦

He just wanted to sit down and cry. He was worn out—still scared from what had happened, weak with relief, grateful to Violet for everything, everything, guilty and disgusted with himself for how he’d acted in the last six months. 

Violet confronted him afterwards, after Jarvis helped Peggy outside to Stark’s house. “You didn’t come here for a fresh start?” she asked, and what was he supposed to say? He was through with lying.

First Thompson, then Violet, did the whole world know? Just thinking about it, Daniel could feel his cheeks heat up. Had he been that obvious the whole time?

He rolled over in bed, burying his face in his hands. Tears squeezed between his fingers and dampened his pillow. How had he screwed everything up so badly?

And if it was true, if everyone could read him like a magazine, then Peggy knew, and she’d never done anything about it. She’d never loved him after all.


	6. Part Six: Cartwheels

The best way to talk to Peggy, Daniel thought, was not hungover. She was too intense, and he was too distracted with his headache and fatigue to try and talk her out of her insane plan.

Which was how he found himself, hours later, in the back of a van with her, surveillance for Jarvis and Dottie Underwood. Being this close to her was distracting, making his palms sweat and his mind wander from their task. They were so close—he could reach out and take her hand if he wanted. Which he did; so badly.

“Daniel?”

“Hm—yeah?”

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

She gave him an intense once-over before clarifying, “I mean emotionally.”

Of all the conversations he did not want to have right now, this was the most prominent. His emotional state was none of her damn business, since it basically revolved around how many times she talked to him for non-business matters, or accidentally brushed against him in passing. Are you okay emotionally? Of course not. He was sitting so close to her and he could still feel the stickiness of alcohol on his lips from last night, when he drank for every drink offer they turned down from one another. Him asking her. Her asking him. No matter how blurry his thoughts got, her face in his mind was always so clear, carving away at his heart when all he wanted was to be numbed.

“Violet broke off the engagement.” Shit, did he say that aloud?

He watched as her face morphed from concern to surprise, and then she began to say how ridiculous that was, that she’d talk to Violet herself, that Daniel was too good, and that hurt—made his heart squeeze painfully and yanked breath from his lips because if he was good enough for Violet why wasn’t he good enough for Peggy?

To hell with it. Daniel took a deep breath. “She did it… because she thinks I’m in love with you.”

She knows I’m in love with you. Peggy.

It was hard—almost impossible—to make Peggy Carter speechless, and yet, that sentence had done it.

“Daniel…”

He couldn’t look at her, wouldn’t see her pity, feeling his face grow hot as the truth fell from his lips. She was apologsing for ruining his life even though she’d really made it all so much better, it was him who ruined everything, everything, and he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him. He looked down at his lap, so he didn’t have to look at her face, watch her beautiful eyes look at him like he was a foolish child.

Then her hand was holding his, her fingers curling around his own, and it wasn’t how he’d expected it would be like, holding him so gently, almost shyly. Like he was a precious, delicate thing.

Daniel looked up. She was looking at him so intently, like she was seeing beyond just his eyes and into his soul. He leaned towards her, hardly daring to breathe because one false step could cause her to blink out of existence or him to wake up from this wonderful, impossible dream.

Thunk.

They jumped apart, pulled open the doors of the van.

Business first, Daniel reminded himself, helping Peggy drag the body down to the pavement. But his heart felt like it was doing cartwheels inside his chest.

❦

Daniel considered it a miracle that he could function normally around her, after last night. Half of him was business as usual, while the other was losing himself in her—her smile and her sureness and how talking to her was so special, because she spoke using all the right words and her personality crept into her sentences so that he wanted to copy them all down and read them when he was alone. Her bluntness and the way she tilted her head and cast her eyes downwards when someone made her gloriously conscious of her perfection.

They were walking together past the studio, and before he could lose his nerve Daniel made himself say, we should talk sometime. When this is over. About… you know. 

_About us._

And then he let himself climb into his car, watching her watching him, and he waved and she waved back. The fading memory of an almost kiss and the promise, maybe, of a real one someday keeping him moving forward.


	7. Part Seven: A Lifetime Together

He stood up, the electric feeling in the air turning his stomach into a jumble of nerves, and stepped towards her. God, her banter was sexy. “You talk a pretty big game when it’s your life on the line, Carter, but when it’s somebody else’s, pretty big hypocrite.” 

She stared at him, maybe taken aback, maybe about to punch him. Whatever.

“What? Nothing to say? No quick comeback?”

The fire behind her eyes was blazing, then she stepped forward, grabbed his face and kissed him, her arms and hands everywhere, and it was everything he’d forbidden himself to imagine, but better. She pushed him back into his chair and when she’d pulled away—too soon—she bit her lip and looked at him like she was scared she messed up. He tried to make his mouth form words, but his brain was still a minute behind what had happened. She just… just kissed him.

“Good point,” he mumbled, and she smiled, and kissed him again, and again, again…

“Chief?”

Daniel blinked. Samberly was standing in front of his desk, looking annoyed (as usual).

“Hm—yeah?”

“I have the report you asked for?” Samberly said, obnoxiously (as usual). Daniel kicked himself, shook himself out of his reverie. 

“Uh—right, thanks.”

He set the envelope down as Samberly left the room and looked at the framed photograph in his desk. Peggy looked back at him, her mouth opening to ask him a question, surrounded by Frost’s equations tacked to the walls. Daniel smiled to himself and shook his head. Peggy.

He checked the clock on the wall and realised with a jolt in his stomach that her plane was arriving in less than half an hour. She’d gone back to New York to tie up loose ends, and to try and convince her roommate that she belonged on Hollywood. And he missed her, even though most nights they talked on the phone until his ear was sore. He wanted to see her, for real.

Half an hour later he was standing at the airport, watching her plane touch down. After what seemed like years, the doors opened and people began to file out, toting suitcases and now obsolete coats. 

He saw her before she saw him. She was wearing her red hat, looking into the crowd, holding a suitcase in one hand and a pair of sunglasses in the other. He raised his arm, and she saw him, and it looked like her whole face lit up when she saw him, like the sun had risen behind her eyes. 

“Daniel!”

“Peggy,” he said, or sighed, as they pushed their way through people and ended up in each other’s arms. 

“Daniel,” she said again, and smiled. Something tugged inside Daniel’s chest, like his heart would start crying if he looked at her for too long. She was so beautiful.

“I missed you,” he managed to say before she was leaning up and kissing him slowly, gently, a kiss that lasted the time they spent apart. 

“Me too,” she whispered, her breath warm, her voice turning his knees to jelly. 

Daniel had no idea what the future held—New York or L.A.—the S.S.R. or the police department. But he was finally by Peggy’s side, and they’d figure it out—after all, they had a lifetime to spend together.


End file.
